THE MOUNTING EVIDENCE
As I look over the list of AS's comments about the HRC in the past two months, I think one can start to make a strong case that his motives are malicious. One can easily make the case that he has set out
- maliciously to tarnish their image, by deliberate abuse of their logo and largely unsupported accusations about many things, including their building funding, their invites for Presidential hopefuls, their 'absence' on key gay-rights issues, their non-support for non-Democrats,
- malicious to strike at their fundraising, by recommending, with an unresearched and unsubstantiatied basis, that readers give to other groups, including a list that he admits it off the top of his head, but which turns out not to measure up to some of his own stated criterion or those he gives for the HRC;
- maliciously to assualt their reputation as a gay-rights group and diminish their lobby capability, by openly impugning their motives, personally disparaging the Executive Director ("operative", "hack") and any others there ("Hillary bots" following "dictats"), and putting as his first question how many members they have. Much of this he does with thin argument that he doesn't put up to scrutiny on his own blog via back-and-forth, as many - even most - other bloggers do, and biased links to this or that person who has a negative view (in one case, he didn't even provide a hyperlink to the quotation or the person's name).
ABOUT LAST WEEKEND'S "PASSIONATE ACTIVISM"
This weekend, he moves on to the next set, without learning the lessons of the last weekend. His last was that the HRC didn't seem to him to spend enough on Washington lobby groups (gulp). Another week goes by, but he hasn't rounded out that criticism to include anything but his worry about that. In other words, he hasn't taken the time to communicate or to develop a sense for how much they ought to spend, even when prompted to do so, so it is fair to assume that his criticism is designed to malign them, no matter how much they spend.
AS writes in passing that HRC can consider his fiance a member, because he went to an HRC concert. Why did he do that, one wonders? In any case, I've got news for you: I'm not a Yankee's fan, but I love a day at the ballpark. Three years ago I was the designated ticket buyer to a game in the Bronx. This week, I got a giant glossy from the Yankees, inviting me to continue supporting them. In other words, AS ought to get over himself and his fixation on policing who is a member and who isn't. It's done and it's widespread. He hasn't still, and it's more indication of harboring ill intentions toward them.
THIS WEEKEND'S EVENT HORIZON
This weekend, he spins off on why the HRC may not disclose how much money they have made on an event in Atlanta. He finds this to be an outrage. However, of all of the LGBT organizations that I've scanned for "special events" income, what most show is aggregate amount earned and aggregate earnings. Even where single events are broken out, the accounting is funny. Most groups show that the event broke-even (or very nearly) and all the rest is accounted for in the line-item "contributions", not "event income". In general, there is always a push-pull on how much to disclose for particular things, something that AS's knee-jerk outrage ignores. If you got a good deal on a venue or something, then it is not beneficial to share that cost data with competitors.
Were AS interested in getting to the bottom of "special events" accounting, he might have tried for some balance, looking at other events too (GLAAD just had a massive, multi-milltion dollar event in the week - did he look at that?). Since he doesn't even try, it's more evidence of a malicious animus toward the HRC.
So, in my estimation, it's time for serious blowback.
I honestly believe that I have less to fear from the organizational "problems" that I've heard about regarding the HRC than I do from Andrew Sullivan, who now openly pretends that he can run the entire gay-rights movement better than they can, whatever their problems, from his blog, by suggesting who people should give money to and who not, dressed up in his b.s. "questions" and an "accountability" act so obviously faux when one looks at the record of deep bias and malicious animus. F-that!
